Tell me more about RSS

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By APCNews

MONTEVIDEO, URUGUAY, 30 November 2004

Using RSS technology, it’s now possible to get news headlines from APC and APC member websites direct to your desktop.

News feeds available cover a rich variety of civil society concerns –from the environment in Bulgaria, to human rights in Spain, to peace campaigning in the USA, to monitoring aid agencies in Australia.

An RSS "feed" notifies you when the website you have subscribed to is updated. So instead of having to actively go and visit the site to find out if there are any updates, the RSS alerts you without you having to do anything. You just subscribe and the latest news (or whatever the most recent additions to the website are) come automatically into your RSS reader.

More and more websites are offering RSS feeds. You can usually identify the feeds by looking for a little orange box or link that says ‘RSS’, ‘XML’ or ‘Syndicate this site’ (eg see http://www.apc.org/english/news/rss/apc.shtml). That is your link to the RSS feed.

What do you need to begin to use RSS?

When you find an RSS feed for a site you like, you must subscribe to

the feed in order to get updates. And you need to install some software –called a ‘news aggregator’ or ‘RSS reader’- to be able to read the feeds.

How do you subscribe to an RSS feed?

You need an RSS reader and you also need the link to the RSS feed of the site you like.

You can get the link by clicking on the ‘XML’ or ‘RSS’ button. Often you will see a lot of programming code but do not worry about that.

You need to copy the web site address that appears when you click that button. It will usually end .rdf or .xml. When you add that address to your news reader you become a subscriber to that particular RSS feed.

What does RSS stand for?

Rich Site Summary or Really Simple Syndication.

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— RSSFEEDSFROMAPC, APCMEMBERSANDPARTNERS —

News feeds available from the APC site cover a rich variety of civil society concerns –from the environment in Bulgaria, to human rights in Spain, to peace campaigning in the USA, to monitoring aid agencies in Australia.

International news headlines with a focus on British news from GreenNet: includes brief news items and campaigns from contacts all over the web, but with specific attention to items from GreenNet, the GreenNet community and the APC. The focus is on internet rights, human rights, gender and social justice and environmental issues. (English).